Online Tools ESL Teachers Must Use To Teach ESL Learners
There are many of you who have always dreamt of travel and earning, and this is absolutely a phenomenal thing where you can enjoy your passion, as well as, earn enough to lead a comfortable life. Well, an online TEFL course is the best-suited certification course for you that can help you seek lucrative English teaching jobs abroad.
In fact, once you have gotten the opportunity to travel abroad and teach in reputed language institutions, you can still go for teaching English online to have an extra source of income.
However, due to the pandemic, many countries have put restrictions on crossing international boundaries.
Having a TEFL certificate can help you fetch online English teaching jobs abroad. Besides, a TEFL teacher is eligible to teach in international schools, IB, schools, private, and public schools as well. Also, if you have a TEFL certification in catering to the needs of the niche market like business professionals you can become a successful corporate trainer.
Thus, in either way, becoming online English teachers and teaching English to non-English speakers, you need certain ESL online teaching tools. There are various software and tools for teaching English online are available in the market which you can use both online (virtual classroom) and in-person TEFL classrooms. The online resources for English teachers play a great role in making a TEFL lecture session quite happening.
Sneak-peak: ESL resources online
WHY TOOLS ARE REQUIRED?
Online teachers who want to teach English to speakers of other languages should be aware of three prime things software tools, marketing ideas, and strategic content creation.
Software and tools are required to conduct classes in a hassle-free manner. Before choosing a particular software for giving online lesson plans, a TEFL teacher must keep in mind that the learning platform should be easy to handle and affordable or rather, free of cost. Having a platform that is having tons of complications while accessing will eventually cost teachers losing their potential ESL students.
Marketing ideas are relevant everywhere because without a proper marketing concept reaching out to people is absolutely impossible. Gone are the days when you could have distributed pamphlets and advertised your expertise in the print media. People are more e-learning centric these days and therefore, you should be very particular about online marketing and sell your English teaching talent to genuine candidates.
Learn more about correct English pronunciation
Content is the king. Period. In order to make your content appealing, you will need specific tools to create it. Besides, you must have the idea of creating strategies for your content that matches the mental abilities of your students. Precisely, the way you’re planning to deliver your content for young learners will definitely not be similar to the content pattern in the case of adult learners. For this, you need retable tools that are quite impactful while you can enjoy their free versions to the fullest.
TOOLS THAT CAN BE USED FOR TEACHING ENGLISH ONLINE:
Software tools: Let’s get things sorted first. Conducting online classes requires some important things like video conference mode, internet connection, and easy accessibility. If you’re unable to communicate with your students then it is going to hamper your reputation and your career prospect as well.
There are various online video conference and meeting platforms that can be used easily and those are free of cost to a certain limit. That limit is quite huge. Google meet, zoom meeting, and Microsoft teams are considered to be the best online platforms for conducting meetings. Google Classroom can also be used and this product is quite amazing.
Google meet is absolutely free of cost where you can have a maximum of 100 participants and you can conduct an n number of meetings. The length of each meeting is 1 hour. You can present your screen and give the best tutor support using attractive content. You can either join from the browser or can use the app which is also free of cost.
The free version of Zoom meetings can let you add 100 participants and the length of the meeting is about 40 minutes. You can have a private and a public group chat section where students can raise their questions besides communicating directly.
The Microsoft Team Plans allow unlimited meetings for 60 minutes each meeting where 100 people can be present at a time. You can have unlimited chats with your students and the best part is that you can share files, create polls, and assign tasks to your students on this platform.
Marketing tools: This is one of the most vital aspects of teaching English online because if students are not aware of your expert existence, your talent will go in vain.
To begin with, you must have a website of your own where you must put a snippet of your demo video, your contact information, qualifications, and teaching experience if any. If you’re having prior teaching practices, do not forget to put a photo of your teaching certification and add the link attached to it to give validation to it. This gives a feel of authenticity to your students.
The website should be properly designed and you can take help from the WIX platform to create the website. Buying a domain is completely your choice but having a registered domain is not free of cost but not that expensive as well. Your website must have a proper layout having a proper navigation and call-to-action facility. Your students must now face any problem while going through the application process. Payment-related confusions should be answered at once and hence, you have to be very much active with your website.
There should be a blog section on your website where you can write crisp and short stories about ESL teaching and can share your experiences. You can add vlogs regarding your teaching experiences and activities that you have conducted in your in-person TEFL classes. You must be active on social media as well to promote your skills and the social media buttons should be linked with your website as well.
Talking about social media, these days promotions are surpassing every limit on social media and the traffic is undoubtedly crazy! Instagram reels are one of the most favorable approaches to promoting products and services. It is a piece of genuine advice to all TEFL teachers who want to teach English online that use Instagram reels properly and strategically to show their expertise off. Post relevant content that is quite catchy and you should try to be professional while uploading.
Before uploading content, you must do market research regarding your online viewers. You should be aware of when the traffic is high and what are types of viewers you’re having frequently. Both Facebook and Instagram insights will give you a clear picture, totally free of cost, regarding your viewers, and you can plan accordingly. Using hashtags will also generate potential traffic where the bounce rate will not be that high.
You can definitely use LinkedIn for the promotional part. It is not necessary to have a premium membership of LinkedIn to explore but you must have good and useful connections who all can boost your posts and other content. It is a sheer professional platform where people having similar or different professions across the globe are present and using LinkedIn properly can fetch you ESL students, for real.
Strategic content creation: By this, we mean that teachers should be aware of the content that they are creating and specifically for the readers. There are tools like Canva, Google docs, Grammarly, etc., that can be used to create lesson plans.
Canva’s free version is absolutely amazing where you can add multiple graphics, photos, create short videos, banners, and so on. The premium version is a bit costly and therefore, we will suggest you utilize the free version to the fullest and that will be enough. You can write your content using Google docs, MS Word, etc., and you can add Grammarly extension to those so as to have your article or content devoid of grammatical mistakes.
Creating content for adult learners should be more of data and technical stuff whereas content for young learners must be attractive and eye-pleasing. You can create slideshows on Google slides or MS PowerPoint and can present those during your online classroom sessions by sharing your screen.
TO END WITH:
Teaching English to ESL students online is one of the most impactful careers and there are numerous benefits. You do not have to commute to your work location or settle abroad where expenditures are definitely like your native place. You can save lots of bucks and gain prestigious experiences as well.
Schools in countries in the Middle East, South East Asia, and Europe hire TEFL certified teachers having teaching experiences in bulk for teaching ESL students online. Besides, you can also teach English in international schools, IB schools, corporate sectors, and colleges if you have proper eligibility criteria and a TEFL certification.
Written By : Ruchi Mehta